Various churches were giving shelter and food to several hundred people whose homes had been destroyed. The police then descended on the churches at dawn, forcibly removed many of the people, and took them to a holding camp on a farm outside Bulawayo, called Helensvale. This place had almost no facilities. Barely twenty-four hours after they had been taken to this camp, the police came to the holding camp, forcibly removed the inhabitants, and dumped them in various rural areas. Some street kids previously housed at a church were taken and dumped some 20 kilometres outside Bulawayo. The police must have been under orders to clear the holding camp without delay. Little or no consideration was given to the welfare of these destitute people rendered homeless just a few weeks ago, or to their chances of finding shelter, food, water or other amenities in the famine stricken areas where they were dumped. One of the people dumped in the rural area said he had no family in the area where he was deposited, nor did he have any prospect of finding accommodation or employment there. It is likely that the same applied to many of the other people affected. A human rights activist said, ―People have been told that if they don‘t provide the name of a rural area to which they can go, they will be imprisoned. People born outside Zimbabwe are told that they will be sent to a farm in the Mashonaland province and will never be allowed to leave it. Or they are told they will be dropped in the Zambezi River.‖ 21 Back to the beginning in Hatcliffe Extension The large settlement at Hatcliffe Extension in Harare was targeted as part of Operation Murambatsvina. Houses and other shelters were destroyed. In a quite remarkable development, the Government then turned around and decided that Hatcliffe Extension would be transformed into a new housing project. It then allocated the stands to most of the same people whose dwellings it had previously destroyed and then evicted! . It invited the stand holders to build on the stands, and told them that they would be permitted to build temporary structures in the meantime. The Government provided only asbestos sheets to build shacks. So the people affected have come full circle. Those who had temporary dwellings at Hatcliffe are now being permitted to construct temporary dwellings. Those who had more substantial brick buildings now have to start from scratch with temporary structures. 22 After the closing of the holding camp at Caledonia Farm in July, many of the families have now moved back to their former stands at Hatcliffe Extension. However, some of the people at Caledonia have been taken by trucks and dumped in various rural areas. Bulldozing of MDC offices in Kwekwe On 27 July 2005, the Kwekwe offices of the main opposition party, the MDC, which are located in this Midlands town, were destroyed by bulldozers under the watchful eye of more than 50 heavily armed policemen accompanied by Kwekwe council officials. The building was purchased five years ago by the party and was being used as the party offices for Midlands Province. 23